“On the contrary, a huge movement was launched with the slogan of women’s frontline service.”

“This promised much larger crowds for the front and satisfied the sense of justice of many suffering men. The traditional practice of using women only as nurses and for other auxiliary services, and not at all assigned to regular combat troops, was clearly becoming outdated. And the strongest rebel against this braid was the female gender itself, which had long been equal to men in everything (and even surpassed them in intellectual achievements, for example). A woman could rightly feel it was an anomaly that she was given only a secondary and despised role in the Struggle itself, even though it had already become certain that the Struggle was the ultimate meaning and purpose of human life.”

Mihály Babits: Pilot Elza, or The Perfect Society

One of the characteristic settings of Pilot Elza is the underground air cave where the population flees from gas attacks. Air caves are part of everyday life, their rubber chimneys are functional parts of the urban landscape, and people are no longer even expected to be frightened by the sounds of bombs: “take it as if the sky is thundering.” Strict order prevails in the shelter, and everyone has their own previously assigned place.

“Oh, the discipline! Kamuthyné hated this word, even though everything was happening in its name now. Even here, in first class, where the wealthy gathered, a stern uniformed gentleman walked around, immediately speaking out against the slightest infraction of the military standards of the air cave.”

Mihály Babits: Pilot Elza, or The Perfect Society

Numerous beliefs are associated with comets passing through the sky. In the Middle Ages they were associated with natural disasters, epidemics, and wars, and often even seen as a manifestation of God’s wrath. This sinister fear persisted into the 20^th century, with ethnographic collections gathering numerous legends linking the outbreak of World War I to the appearance of Halley’s Comet.

“Kamuthyné still remembered the fantastic event from her childhood: when the famous comet, whose plume passed through our atmosphere at that time, pulled the Little Earth, floating on a loose structure, into its own gravitational circle and carried it into Space like some new planet, a tiny moon. Thirty years later, the comet passed near Earth once more: this was the appearance which, even today, superstitious folk claim foretold the coming of the perpetual struggle. At that point, the Little Earth once again passed beyond the range of observation. But this time it was much more restless, and there were no studies of scientific value left. The miniature planet was truly only taken care of by its creator, but he disappeared unexpectedly and mysteriously in the turbulent days leading up to the outbreak of war, and his records were lost with him.”

Mihály Babits: Pilot Elza

“The observatories were besieged by the public all night; the schools were full of students, the churches were open; the people ran to the church to pray, to sing, from there to the school to find out what the scholars were saying, and then out to the open sky to stare in awe. In the church they told them: ‘Repent, confess, be baptized, circumcise, sacrifice, scourge yourself, for this is the last time you will see heaven!’ In the school they told them: ‘Enjoy, study, learn, for no one will ever see again what you can see now’; and in the market they said: ‘Let us drink, let us party, for we will perish anyway’. Some took one piece of advice, some another, some the third, and some all of them.”

Mór Jókai: Novel of the Next Century